Gateway Festival Orchestra to present free Sunday concerts throughout July

The Gateway Festival Orchestra will begin its 43rd season of free summer concerts with “Midwest Musical Masters,” highlighting composers and young artists from Missouri and Illinois, at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 9, in Washington University’s Brookings Quadrangle.

The orchestra is conducted by James Richards, professor of orchestral studies at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Subsequent concerts take place at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, July 16 and 23 in Brookings Quadrangle. The season concludes Sunday, July 30, in Graham Chapel.

Brookings Quadrangle is located just west of Brookings Hall, near the intersection of Brookings and Hoyt drives. The public is encouraged to bring lawn seating. Graham Chapel is located immediately north of the Mallinckrodt Student Center, 6445 Forsyth Blvd. For more information, contact the Gateway Festival Orchestra at (314) 569-0371.

“Midwest Musical Masters” will highlight the work of St. Louis-area composers. The program will include performances of Horizons by Robert Howard, professor emeritus at Meramec Community College and conductor of the Belleville Philharmonic; One of Ours: A Cather Symphony by Barbara Harbach, composer-in-residence at the University of Missouri—St. Louis; and music of Scott Joplin. Clayton Penrose — a 13-year-old student in the magnet program at Franklin Middle School in Springfield, IL — will be soloist in Camille Saint-Saëns’ Havanaise for violin and orchestra.

The concert series continues July 16 with “Molto Italiano,” co-sponsored by the Italian-American Federation of St. Louis. Takaoki Sugitani, a violinist with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, will be featured as soloist for selections from Antonio Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. Also included on the program is music from four Italian operas: Semiramide by Gioachino Rossini; Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s The Secret of Suzanne; Cavalleria rusticana of Pietro Mascagni; and Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème. The concert concludes with Peter Tchaikovsky’s Capriccio italien and Thomas Bucci’s Italian Folk Fantasy.

The July 23 concert — “Classics from the Classics” — will honor the 250th anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s birth with performances of the composer’s overture to the opera La clemenza di Tito and his Serenata notturna. Also on the program are Franz Joseph Haydn’s Symphony No. 104 (“London”) and Carl Maria von Weber’s Andante and Rondo ongarese for bassoon and orchestra. The latter will feature soloist Helena Kranjc, a 2006 high school graduate from Macomb, IL, who will enter New York’s Manhattan School of Music in the fall.

The series concludes July 30 with “Great Romantics.” The program will include Antonín Dvoák’s Symphony No. 6 in D Major and Camille Saint-Saëns’ Cello Concerto No. 1, the latter featuring Parkway North High School sophomore Monica Godbee as soloist.

Gateway Festival Orchestra

The Gateway Festival Orchestra was established in 1964 by conductor William Schatzkamer, professor emeritus in piano in the Department of Music, and other local musicians, in part to provide summer employment to members of the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra.

Gateway was the first integrated professional orchestra in the St. Louis area and its formation ultimately led to the merger of the Black Musicians’ Association with the Musicians’ Association of St. Louis (now Local 2-197 of the American Federation of Musicians). The group originally performed on the downtown riverfront but relocated to Washington University’s in 1970.

Concerts are supported by the Roland Quest Memorial Fund of the Greater St. Louis Community Foundation; the Regional Arts Commission; the Arts & Education Council of Greater St. Louis; the Missouri Arts Council; and the Music Performance Fund of the American Federation of Musicians.